One of the most popular programmable integrated circuits (ICs) is a central processing unit (CPU) applied to a personal computer system. Due to the increasing requirements on rapid and reliable operational ability and a variety of complicate functions of a CPU, lots of time and money are spent in designing a powerful CPU. Accordingly, the CPU is generally costly. For meeting the requirements on competitive prices and flexible applications of consumer IC products, e.g. audio/video apparatus, electrical appliances, electrical toys, watches, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile or cellular phones, etc., another programmable IC that is so called as a micro-controller unit (MCU) is used in lieu of the costly CPU in the uni-chip system.
Please refer to FIG. 1 which shows the use of a micro-controller for coordinating a plurality of peripheral equipment devices. For example, the micro-controller 10 controls a display 11, a speaker 12 and an input device such as a keyboard 13 by way of the control program codes stored in a read-only memory (ROM) 101 in the micro-controller 10 and associated with the operations of these peripheral equipment devices. In other words, by varying control program codes inside the micro-controller 10, various controls can be implemented.
For supplying the clients with desired products, micro-controller chip manufacturers are required to provide hardware platforms for the clients to write in control program codes and perform test and debug operations thereby. Generally, the hardware platforms are specific to certain IC products. In other words, different IC products may need different hardware platforms to write in control program codes and perform test and debug operations. Since hardware platforms are high in cost and complicate in architecture, and the circulating period of common IC products, particularly consumer IC products, becomes shorter and shorter, the use of such conventional hardware platforms is time- and cost-inefficient.